Madness Radio

What does it mean to be called "crazy" in a crazy world? Madness Radio: Voices And Visions from Outside Mental Health brings you personal experiences of 'madness' from beyond conventional perspectives and mainstream treatments, and also features authors, advocates, professionals, and artists.

Hosted by Will Hall, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia, Madness Radio was launched in 2005 on Valley Free Radio in Massachusetts and is syndicated nationally on the Pacifica Network. Madness Radio is heard monthly on KBOO the first monday of the month from 11:30am to 12. Will is a leader in the peer recovery movement, a therapist in Portland, has a Diploma from Process Work Institute, and is the director of the support and education community Portland Hearing Voices.

Check out the website archives at www.madnessradio.net to listen online and download more than 100 Madness Radio episodes produced to date. Full hour-long versions of shows heard on KBOO are available.

On this episode of Madness Radio: Voices and Visions from Outside Mental Health: Do pharmaceutical companies control the social definition of normal? Can advertising and public relations campaigns turn acceptable personality differences into unacceptable disorders? Christopher Lane discusses his book Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, including the way politics and profits drive the bible of mental health treatment, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

Is schizophrenia really an "incurable illness?" Can psychotherapy reach people in different realities? Does Freudian psychoanalysis offer a humane and empowering approach? Bert Karon, psychoanalyst since 1955 and author of the classic textbook Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia, discusses his talking cure with people diagnosed
psychotic and schizophrenic

Dina Tyler survived a psychotic break and bipolar diagnosis, including
toxic overmedication, hospital sexual assault -- and a vision of the
meaning of life. Today she works to reach young people in psychotic
alternate realities using the power of listening and deep connection.
She is co-director of the San Francisco Bay Area Mandala Project, a
vision of a new, humane and spiritual system of mental health care.

Audio

Today's guest is Laura Delano. She graduated in 2006 from Harvard University, where she studied Social, Medical, and Psychiatric Anthropology. Her thesis,Psycho-pharmaceuticals and Selfhood: Negotiating Identity as a Consumer of Mood Disorder Medications, explored the ways in which individuals living with a psychiatric diagnosis and taking psychotropic medications construct a sense of self and negotiate agency. Initially diagnosed with and medicated for major depression at the age of fourteen and re-diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of eighteen, Laura tapered off of her last psychotropic medication in September 2010 at age twenty-seven and no longer lives with a psychiatric diagnosis. She works today as a Peer Specialist in the mental health system, and also writes a blog for the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care.

In this episode Madness Radio asks, What is the meaning of hearing voices? Is it a malfunctioning brain, or a clue to childhood trauma asking to be understood?

UK psychologist Eleanor Longden survived a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and went on to be a leading researcher around voice hearing, trauma, and dissociation. She is a pioneer in the movement to understand voices as a normal human experience -- and truly help people by healing trauma.

What is it like for a prisoner diagnosed with mental illness? Should we have more mental health treatment in prison -- or should we work to abolish our prison system?

Daniel Hazen spent three years in prison and experienced firsthand the ways prison creates madness. Today he is director of Voices of the Heart, a leading support agency run by and for people in recovery from a diagnosis of mental illness.

Today Madness Radio asks, Why are so many children being diagnosed bipolar? Are medications needed to treat disease - or just keep children under control? What else can parents do when faced with difficult behavioral problems? Sharna Olfman, Psychology Professor at Point Park University and editor of the book Bipolar Children,
discusses the growing trend of labeling children bipolar.

Every month Madness Radio explores mental health from outside the mainstream on KBOO FM.

On this show, Madness Radio asks, Can indigenous medicine, including the psychedelic ayahuasca, help anxiety, depression, and addiction? What do healers of Peru have to teach us about mental health? Francois Demange, a curandero who has studied for more than sixteen years with the Shipibo and Quechua Lamista peoples, discusses the promise and potential dangers of traditional Amazonian plant medicine for the west.

Madness Radio asks, How can we truly help combat veterans facing the aftermath of war? Is veteran trauma a sign of mental illness, or a healthy response to violent situations? Are medications and therapy the answer?

How are our elders treated in nursing homes? Are powerful anti-psychotic medications being used for treatment, or for social control? Does living in a nursing home promote mental health -- or make it worse? Carole Hayes-Collier, psychiatric abuse survivor and longtime activist with the Grey Panthers, discusses her work to empower people as we age.